


Apples To Apples

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x13, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene Fic, Reference to Canon Death, Sins of the Father, a little bit of angst, episode reaction fic, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 03:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6036934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had turned her own flesh and blood over to the police. Was that unforgivable? Or understandable?</p>
<p>Was she a bad daughter, for handing over her father like that?</p>
<p>Episode reaction/missing scene fic for 4x13 "Sins Of The Father."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apples To Apples

“Would it really have been so bad if you’d cut off _both_  of Malcolm’s hands?” Felicity asked, disturbing the peaceful silence that surrounded them. “I mean, if he has less hands, he can do less...villain-type stuff,” she mused. “No killing, no brainwashing of vulnerable young women who just so happen to be his daughter...”

Oliver finished his work - a final stripe of silver down the middle of the nail on Felicity’s big toe - and capped the bottle, sighing. It wasn’t a negative sigh, just a contemplative one. They hadn’t really talked about the whole ‘leaving Malcolm Merlyn one hand short of a full set of limbs’ thing, aside from a brief comment about how Oliver still somehow felt guilty for it. 

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. It felt like a good option, at the time. Nyssa got what she wanted, and nobody had to die.”

“Except Malcolm’s dignity,” Felicity muttered, and Oliver gave something that she was pretty sure was a snort of laughter. It was completely inelegant and so completely _perfect_  at the same time. 

“It was a pretty genius plan, though,” Felicity continued. “I wasn’t expecting it. I certainly would _never_ have thought of it myself.” She smiled softly, a knowing kind of smile. “So you get points for that.”

“I appreciate it,” he smiled back, uncapping the bottle of aquamarine polish and once again releasing a familiar cloud of fumes into the room. She’d always had a strange liking for the smell of nail polish. It reminded her of home, and her Mom, and of family. Yes, the fumes would eventually give her a headache, she knew, but it was nice to enjoy it while Oliver pampered her. 

It wasn’t how she had always imagined spending her nights,spread across the couch with a blanket on her knees, having her toenails painted by Oliver Queen, but there was something about the simple gesture that made her feel...loved. Appreciated. Wanted. 

_Beautiful._

The brush tickled, but he was oh-so-careful, intense concentration on his handsome face, completing the precise task with the same amount of focus that she usually only saw on him during missions.

It thrilled her to know and be certain of the fact that something that most guys would find frivolous and silly - not to mention  ‘girly’ or too ‘feminine’ for their tastes - Oliver took very seriously indeed, because it was her. Because it made her happy.

Besides, just because she spent the majority of her life sitting down now, it didn’t mean she couldn’t have awesome colours on her toenails. It was the same explanation she had given Oliver when he’d asked her why she still wore her highest, most fabulous heels; because being in a chair was no excuse for bad fashion.

Or bad shoes. 

“Did you do the right thing?” was her next question, more pressing this time. “Giving in to Nyssa like that?”

“I wouldn’t think of it as giving in to her. It was more like...doing what was already inevitable. Fixing a mistake that should never have happened in the first place.”

Felicity hummed, thinking about that. Yes, it had been a colossal mistake to give Malcolm the Demon’s Head ring, not so long ago - had it really been almost a whole year? - but replacing him with another (not quite so) bad egg couldn’t possibly be a _better_  choice?

She’d been thinking about that a lot. Choices, better ones and worse ones, whether you could really make up for one mistake by doing something that was just as bad, or definitely not much _better,_ at least.

It had been eating away at her ever since Detective Lance had swooped into her office to read Noah - her father - his rights and put handcuffs on his wrists, leading him out of the Palmer Tech building right in front of his own daughter. 

She had turned her own flesh and blood over to the police.

Was that unforgivable? Or understandable?

Was she a bad daughter, for handing over her father like that?

“Why the sudden interest?”

And just like that, everything that she’d been holding deep inside was spilling out. 

“Am I bad daughter for handing my own father to the police?” As she spoke, tears filled her eyes, burning them behind her glasses, making everything blurry. “Am I just as bad as him for turning my back on him, the way he turned his back on me? Is there more of me in him than I want to admit there is?”

She sniffed, swallowed, wrapping her arms around herself. She couldn’t bring herself to look Oliver in the eye. She was too afraid of losing it completely if she did. 

“Mom told me once that all she saw in me was him,” she said. “I told her that she was wrong. But I guess I was the one who was wrong. You know what they say - the apple never falls far from the tree.”

“Those apples are wrong,” Oliver said firmly, speaking for the first time since Felicity had let her fears be put into words - all while continuing to apply polish to her toenails. “And they’ve fallen from completely the wrong tree. You’re not like him, Felicity,” he continued, “you’re nothing like him. You’re - you’re _incredible_. And you’re twice the woman _and_  man that he is. I won’t ever let you forget that.”

He capped the bottle, laying it aside, then began rubbing gentle circles into the tops of her feet. The pressure felt good, and it stopped her feet from getting cold - which the doctor had said was important - and it was just... _soothing_ , in a way few things ever were when you ran a Fortune 500 Company and worked by night for a crime-fighting vigilante team. 

Felicity sniffed, tears rolling down her blush-pink cheeks; it didn’t take much, these days, to make her go red like a schoolgirl. Not since Oliver. 

She fidgeted with the edge of the blanket covering her legs, pulling the material through her fingers over and over again. 

“I won’t let you forget how good you are, either,” Felicity said quietly. “I may not exactly be... _proud_  of my dad, but I know that wherever he is, your dad is proud of you. And your mom. Both of them. I just know it.” She shrugged, her lips quirking into a smile despite her tears. “There are some pretty good apple trees in your family.”

“I wish you could have known them,” Oliver said quietly, so quietly, and with a sadness that made the lump rise in Felicity’s throat all over again.

She sometimes forgot that Oliver was essentially an orphan. An orphan later in life, yes, but an orphan nonetheless. He had no parents of his own, no flesh and blood mother and father; they had both sacrificed themselves, to protect them, him and Thea. 

When she saw how badly he still missed them, it hurt as if it were her own pain, her own heart aching. 

“I’m sorry that I won’t.” Felicity’s voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper, and throaty with emotion. “Especially now, with the wedding and everything....”

“I’m sorry, too,” he replied. There was a wistful kind of sadness in his expression, nostalgia for a different time - and a different place. “You would have been an amazing daughter-in-law.”

“You know, my Mom already thinks of you as her son-in-law,” Felicity said, hoping to bring a smile back to his face. “She’s pretty attached to you, actually. It’s a little scary.”

“Scary, I can handle,” Oliver said. “I fell in love with _you,_ didn’t I?”

If Felicity had had the ability to, she would have poked him in the chest with her foot. 

Instead, she stuck her tongue out at him and quipped, “Yeah, you did.”

He could hardly find cause for complaint. 


End file.
